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- Herausgeber: Little Tiger Press
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Serie: Skeleton Keys
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
The fourth tall-but-true tale in the darkly comic series SKELETON KEYS from the award-winning duo behind STITCH HEAD.Greetings! My name is Skeleton Keys and these fantabulant fingers of mine can open doors to hidden worlds… Join me for the terrifying tale of the Nobody – a nightmarish unimaginary with a dark mission…On the hunt for an unimaginary, Skeleton Keys meets young Flynn Twist, a boy with a wild imagination who tells of his encounter with a terrifying shadow calling itself the Nobody.Skeleton Keys suspects it could be a shapeless unimaginary searching for a physical form. As night falls the Nobody roams the village of Matching Trousers turning everyone it meets into zombie-like nobodies. No one is safe – not even Skeleton Keys. Soon only Flynn is left. Can he become the brave hero of his imagination and free everybody from the Nobody?Perfect for fans of David Walliams, AMELIA FANG and THE NOTHING TO SEE HERE HOTEL.Praise for SKELETON KEYS: "Guy has mixed cleverly created characters with his trademark humour and wit to give us his best book yet. This is one spooky series I'm going to devour!" – Authorfy
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To Christopher Gatsinzi Simpson and Elliott
Gatsinzi Harris ~ Guy Bass
To you, dear reader! ~ Pete Williamson
Contents
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Greetings! To gadarounds, chanternuts and rooklers! To the imaginary and the unimaginary! To the living, the dead and everyone in between, my name is Keys … Skeleton Keys.
Hundreds of moons ago, I was an IF – an imaginary friend. Then, before I could say “Crumcrinkles”, I was suddenly as real as feet! I had become unimaginary.
Now, Ol’ Mr Keys looks out for other IFs who find themselves suddenly unimagined, whenever, wherever and whyever! For these fantabulant fingers open doors to anywhere and elsewhere … hidden worlds … secret places … doors to the limitless realm of all imagination.
These keys have led me to a hundred adventures and a hundred more relatively soon afterwards! The stories I could tell you…
But of course, it is a story you are waiting for! Well, fret not, dallywanglers – today’s tall tale is such a hum-dum-dinger that it will make you question the unquestionable. A tale so truly 2unbelievable that it must, unbelievably, be true.
This is Flynn Twist. It is safe to say, which I do, that Flynn lives in a world of his own. Even he is not sure why he so often escapes into his imagination. But, wherever possible, Flynn lets his mind wander far and wide to the wonderfilled world of his wild imaginings, in which he is the hero of his own stories. They are tales of a brave and valiant champion and his mighty steed … of noble quests and dangers untold … of a magical world where anything can happen.
3But, little does Flynn know, his life is about to become stranger and more adventuresome than he ever could have dreamed.
For strange things can happen when imaginations run wild…
Our story begins in the quiet, oh-so slumberly village of Matching Trousers, population three hundred and forty-three. It is autumn, and ruddy-reddish leaves strew quiet, tree-lined streets. Flynn and his infant sister Nellie have recently moved to Matching Trousers to live with their grandmother. It is the end of their first week in the village and life, though generally uneventful, is not without surprises… 4
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RUFF
UFF
RARFF!
Flynn raced back into the house and slammed the front door shut. Next door’s dog kept barking. Flynn was quite sure that, given half a chance, that dog would eat him, shoes and all.
“Did you put the bins out?” called his gran from the kitchen.
“He’s out there…” Flynn replied. “He’s always out there.” 8
“Who, Rocky Two?” said Gran. “That dog’s bark is worse than his bite … although his bite could take your head off.”
“No, I mean the boy over the road – he’s out there again.” Flynn edged over to the front window and peered out through a tiny gap in the curtains. The grey gloom of evening had fallen over the village. Still, he could make out the boy standing outside his house on the other side of the road. He was younger than Flynn, maybe five or six, and so bone-thin and pale that he looked altogether unwell. “He’s not moving,” Flynn added. “He’s just standing there, staring.”
“There’s no crime in standing or staring,” said Flynn’s gran, coming in from the kitchen with two plates of food. “You’ll get used to it.”
“I never see anybody else there, but he can’t live on his own, it’s not allowed,” said Flynn. “He’s weird.”
“That’s not a crime either, lucky for me,” added Gran. Flynn turned to see her with a carrot up each nostril and let out a chuckle. Gran took the carrots 9out of her nose and put them straight back on their plates. Flynn winced. “Eat, or it’ll go cold,” she said, taking out her false teeth and dropping them into a glass before tucking in. Flynn winced again and made his way to the dinner table.
All Gran’s dinners looked the same – a grey piece of meat surrounded by mushy vegetables, with a comforting, school dinnerish smell. Not for the first time, Flynn cut the piece of meat in two and, when his gran wasn’t looking, slipped half into his pocket. If 10he was to survive tomorrow’s encounter with next door’s dog, he would need all the help he could get.
Flynn’s first forkful was heading towards his mouth when the sound of his sister’s cries echoed through the house. Flynn’s gran looked over at the old grandfather clock, tick-tocking loudly in the corner of the room.
“She’s only been down half an hour,” Gran sighed, taking a mouthful of food. “Nellie does so hate being left alone. Sounds like she could do with another one of her brother’s stories…”
“I already told her a story,” said Flynn. “It was a new one, too.”
“A new tale from Twist World?” said Gran, taking another mouthful. “What did you call this one?”
“Sir Flynnian versus the Horrible Darkness,” replied Flynn proudly.
“Charming!” laughed his gran. “Well, I 11bet she’d love to hear another one – there’s nothing Nellie Twist loves more than the adventures of Sir Flynnian and Christopher…”
“Crystal Fur,” Flynn corrected her. “She’s Sir Flynnian’s mighty steed.”
More mewling came from upstairs. Gran made a deliberate grunt and a show of trying to get up.
“Curse my old bones,” she groaned. “By the time I drag myself up those stairs, she’ll think nobody’s coming…”
“I’ll go,” said Flynn with an eye-rolling smile as he hopped down from the table. “But you’re washing up.”
He headed upstairs. Flynn didn’t mind delaying his dinner too much – his sister was the only person who seemed to have time for his stories. When she couldn’t sleep, he would regale her with tales of his imagined adventures in Twist World. It was a world of 12Flynn’s own creation, in which he was the brave and selfless Sir Flynnian, champion of the Five Islands, who, together with his gleaming light-dragon, Crystal Fur, protected their world against the forces of evil. Sir Flynnian and his mighty steed had saved Twist World a dozen times, with each daring rescue more impressively heroic than the last.
Flynn wasn’t sure why his stories settled his sister, but he enjoyed telling them. By the time he’d reached the landing, he’d already decided to tell his sister a sequel to Sir Flynnian versus the Horrible Darkness, aptly titled Sir Flynnian and the Return of the Horrible Darkness.
“The Horrible Darkness had returned to Twist World…” Flynn began as he pushed open the door to his sister’s bedroom.
The room was ice-cold. 13
A motorized lamp sent a dim rainbow of colours spinning across the ceiling and down to the open window. Curtains shuddered against the incoming breeze. Flynn turned towards his sister to find her standing up in her cot, staring intently into the darkest corner of the room.
“Nellie? You OK?” Flynn asked.
His sister did not move. “No,” she replied.
“What’s the matter? Did you poo again?” asked Flynn. He went over to the cot and cautiously sniffed the air. “How do you eat nothing and poo everything?”
Nellie raised her tiny arm and pointed in the direction of her stare.
“No,” she said again.
Even with the big light off, Flynn couldn’t understand why that corner was so dark. It was as if there was an extra shadow there, adding to the gloom. 14
“It’s OK,” Flynn said, not that Nellie seemed nervous. “There’s … nothing there.”
Is there something there? he thought. After only a week of living at his gran’s, his sister’s room was still not entirely familiar. Did Gran keep something in the corner? He squinted at the darkness. The shadow seemed to stir and shift – it was moving.
What was it?
Flynn took two sidesteps towards the door without taking his eyes off the shadow and reached out his hand towards the light switch. He couldn’t find it.
He glanced at the wall, just for a second.
“No…” hissed a voice. “No … body.”
It wasn’t Nellie.
Flynn looked back at the corner. He saw the shadow rise up, as if climbing to its feet. Horror froze him to the spot.
Then the shadow showed its teeth. 15
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The shadow’s teeth seemed to glow in the darkness.
It was alive.
It rose up and slid across the room, an almost-human thing. Then it swept towards Nellie’s cot and loomed over it.
“No … body,” the shadow said again, its voice a low, rasping whisper. A thick cloud of smoky blackness billowed out from the shadow’s open mouth. Nellie stared up, her eyes wider than ever.
Flynn had always wondered if, faced with 19perils unknown, he could be as brave as his alter ego, Sir Flynnian. But fear fixed him fast as the shadow reached for his sister. He tried to cry out but even that would not come.
Help, he thought. Then:
YAP!
YIP YAP!
The shadow suddenly lurched backwards. From out of nowhere, something – a creature – had landed on one edge of the cot. For a horrified moment Flynn thought it was next door’s dog, but the thing on the cot was no bigger than a cat. The shadow replied to the creature’s barks with a loud hiss and gnashed its teeth.
As he fumbled breathlessly in the dark, Flynn finally found the light switch. He slammed his palm against it. The shadow let out a grating shriek as stark light filled the room. It shrank swiftly away before seeming 20to pour itself out of the open window. And with that, it disappeared into the darkness.
Flynn raced for the window and slammed it shut. He pressed his face against the glass to see if the shadow was still out there. After a moment he spotted the boy over the road, still standing in his front garden … still staring up at the house.
Did he see the shadow? Flynn thought. What if it goes after him?
He was about to call out to the boy when he remembered his sister – and the thing on the edge of her cot.
“Nellie…?” he blurted, spinning round. Nellie was gazing up at the creature, which stood protectively over her.
Flynn recognized it immediately.
He was looking at a figment of his own imagination.
“Fur?”21
She looked the same as she had in his imagination – small and four-legged, with grey fur, an otter-like head and a tufted tail twice as long as her body. A thin pair of antennae protruded from Fur’s head and a pair of feathered wings grew from her back. Flynn blinked hard. “Fur? Is that—?”
“Right, what’s all this noi—aaAH!”
